


is the real over there more vivid than here ever feels

by falterth



Series: Naruto Femslash Week 2018 [9]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Death, F/F, Grief, Mourning, Naruto Femslash Week 2018, healing process, people actually go to therapy instead of whatever they do in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 11:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15840108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/falterth/pseuds/falterth
Summary: The healing process is slow.(Uzumaki Naruto dies. Guilt doesn’t sound so bad until you’re the one experiencing it. Blame is easy to escape until you’re the one pinning it on people. Naruto Femslash Week 2018, “grief” prompt.)





	is the real over there more vivid than here ever feels

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "Love Illumination" by Franz Ferdinand

Sakura accepts the mission to Lightning because it looks like a relatively safe one. She accepts it because there’s a low chance of things going to shit. She takes Naruto and nobody else with her because nowadays it’s just the two of them. It turns out that everything she had assumed is proven horribly, horribly wrong.

“Sakura.”

“Naruto?”

She can’t stop the bleeding. His ribs have been eaten away, his flesh is sizzling, bubbling hot and it stinks, foreign chakra is burning right through her attempts to heal him, and Naruto is crying.

“Let me go. Stop it. Please. It hurts so much—”

“You have so much to live for!” She scolds. “You can’t give up now! I’m going to stop the chakra that’s getting to you and I’m going to help you live.” Her hands have been lit up with chakra for so long that she thinks they may come away stained green forever. It’s a price she’s absolutely willing to pay if it means Naruto will be okay.

“I don’t want to,” Naruto pleads. His eyes are closed. Sakura is afraid he’ll open them. She doesn’t want to look into his eyes, doesn’t want to look into them and see that he’s telling the truth. “You know . . . I saw my mom back then. While we were fighting Kaguya. And my dad. They were—they were in my seal. My mom’s got red hair just like me, Sakura. Can you believe it?” He chokes on a sob and reaches out to grab the hem of her shirt. “It hurts, Sakura. Why does it hurt so bad?”

Sakura stays silent because she doesn’t know. She’s desperate to distract Naruto from his pain though, so she encourages him to go on. “Keep talking about your mom, Naruto. What was she like?”

“I didn’t talk to her a lot,” Naruto says, breath coming out in ragged gasps. Tears leak out of the corners of his closed eyes and form a trail, a river, a ribbon of wetness across his face. Sakura tries not to think about what will happen if she can’t heal him. “She punched me in the face and then said sorry. She hugged me and kissed me on the forehed. She was so warm. I love her so much, Sakura. And dad . . . he was there. I saw him before I saw mom. But they both said . . . they said . . . they’d wait for me. That when my time came they’d be there and they said they loved me, Sakura. They said they’d always love me forever ‘n ever ‘n ever. I want that. I want to go see them.”

“You can’t,” Sakura says breathlessly. Her chakra reserves are dwindling with every second that passes and exhaustion is making her vision go blurry. She’ll power through it, though, for Naruto’s sake. She always has. “I can fix you. It’s not your time yet. I love you too, Naruto. There are people here who love you.”

“But it’s not them,” Naruto says, voice coming out closer to a whimper than he probably realizes.

_Please don’t open your eyes please don’t open your eyes and beg me if you beg for it I won’t be able to keep on going it looks like it hurts so much this hurts me too Naruto take it back please please please don’t say you want to die take it back I can’t stand it my hands hurt my arms are shaking my chakra is almost gone and I don’t want you to die try try try your hardest to live or else I won’t be able to help you stop you keep you alive just keep them closed and let me heal you please Naruto listen to me for once and—_

Naruto opens his eyes. They’re Sakura’s favorite shade of purple. She’s never been able to say no to those eyes. He shakes his head once, says, “Let me go,” and Sakura shuts off the chakra flow to her hands.

Uzumaki Naruto dies.

_#_

It’s just Sakura now.

She’s in the Land of Lightning, but she sprints to Konoha with Naruto’s body on her back, slowly wasting away from the foreign chakra that had eaten and hadn’t stopped eating even after he’d died. She sprints, legs aching, scooping chakra out of her reserves until she’s scraping along her very bottom limit, and still she goes on.

She doesn’t sleep. Instead she takes soldier pills, night after night for an entire week. She feels taut as a drum. She can’t look at Naruto’s body other than to put it on her back and to take it off every evening. Her hands are constantly shaky. She doesn’t heal any of her own wounds. Her chakra bleeds out into the air, crying for help, and nobody comes. Sakura is out in the middle of the wild, three days from Konoha, with the body of her genin teammate slowly being eaten to dust by a chakra so corrosive even the Kyuubi hadn’t been able to fight it.

Sakura thinks she hates this, although thinking (and feeling and tasting and hearing and balancing) are becoming progressively harder with every day she travels. Her skin feels flaky. Her throat is always dry. And she has no food, so when Konoha’s gates finally come into view she collapses the moment she enters the village, shinobi parting before her. She’s dragging Naruto behind her because she’s too weak to carry him on her back. She thinks her ankle is broken and she definitely has more than one infected cut.

Someone breaks away from the gathered shinobi and calls for a medic. Another person rushes up to her, and Sakura realizes it’s Hinata.

“Sakura, how bad are—”

This is all Hinata manages to say before Sakura blacks out.

_#_

The healing process is slow.

Hinata’s there to support her the moment she gets home from the hospital—she knows what’s happened because she’d seen Sakura dragging what had been left of her dead teammate’s body through the front gates of the village, had seen her trying to explain things to Kakashi and passing out on the spot, had seen her in the hospital room looking sickly and emaciated.

She’s there to unlock the door for her fiance, there to help her clean off in the shower. She’s there to notice that Sakura stares at her hands more often than not.

“I feel like they should still be green,” Sakura confesses a week after she gets home. They’re both in bed. Sakura’s the little spoon, as always, and Hinata’s pressed up against her back. Their legs are tangled together so thoroughly that it’s almost impossible to tell whose legs are whose in the dark. “I had my hands . . . for hours _,_ I was trying to heal him. He woke up toward the end of it and begged me to let him die.” Hinata pulls Sakura tighter and waits for her to continue. “He said his parents were waiting for him. That he’d seen them in his seal way back when, during the last war. He . . . he seemed so sure. Like he knew what he wanted and it was over there and life held nothing for him anymore. He begged me with his eyes shut at first and it was easy to tell him he had to live. But when he opened his eyes I just . . . immediately gave in. I let him die. Hinata, I let him die.” Sakura jerks out of Hinata’s hold and leans over the edge of the bed and vomits. Hinata sits up immediately, cautiously touching Sakura’s shoulder. “I’m—I’m so sorry, Hinata, I—”

Hinata gets out of their bed and flicks the lights on. She surveys the mess. It’s not too bad. “I’ll get a mop for you. And . . . Sakura, he sounded like he wanted to die. I—” She has to pause here, has to swallow the lump of grief—and what she suspects might be anger—that rises in her throat, but she finds her voice again. “I miss him so much. I won’t say that I don’t. And I wish he hadn’t died. But from what you said he was begging you. He must have been in so much pain.”

“He was. It hurt him so bad," Sakura cries, voice cracking. “He was crying. It must have hurt so bad. That chakra was eating him from the inside out and I didn’t even get to figure out who did it. Do you know how that feels? Not being able to even kill the person who killed your best friend?”

Hinata thinks back to Neji and Kaguya, buries the deep-burning rage that tries to claim her whenever she thinks about it, tells it that now is not the time, and nods. “Go to the bathroom and brush your teeth,” she says simply. “I’ll get you that mop and a glass of water.”

Sakura nods, climbing out of the other side of the bed in order to avoid the vomit on the floor, and sniffles again. Her nose is red, and so are her eyes. Her cheeks are blotchy. “I’m just really disgusted with myself,” she admits. “I just keep thinking what if? What if there was some other way? What if I could have argued with him for longer? What if I could’ve seen that he was in so much pain? What if he’d been hurting before and he just took the—the opportunity—”

Hinata admits to herself that it’d been something that had also occurred to her. She doesn’t think people can suddenly have death wishes that come out of nowhere. She knowsNaruto’s been through much worse, just . . . not in the last three years. Not since Kaguya had been defeated. Hinata wonders how long Naruto’s been looking forward to dying and finds herself not wanting to know. “You’re right to worry,” Hinata says. “You’re right to think of . . . to think that there might have been other options.”

Hinata’s not sure how to say what she’s feeling right now. She knows, objectively, that Naruto had begged for her to let him go, but Sakura is a medic-nin on par with Senju Tsunade. Hinata can’t help but think that there might have been some other way. That Sakura could have saved him anyway and they’d have been able to bring him back and talk to him. That they’d have been able to bring him back and let him fall in love with life again. But he’s dead now and they’ll never know.

Sakura nods at her and attempts at a smile. It fails horrifically, and her face falls. “I’ll go take care of my teeth now.”

While Sakura’s in the bathroom, Hinata busies herself with going to their cleaning supplies cupboard and fetching a mop, a towel, and a bucket of water. She sets that all out on the floor next to the puddle of puke and goes back out into their kitchen to get a glass of water for Sakura. She puts it down on their nightstand when she comes back to their room and sits on the bed waiting for Sakura to finish up with her teeth. When five minutes pass and she doesn’t come out, Hinata takes the liberty of knocking softly on the bathroom door.

Sakura opens the door. She looks like she’s done with brushing. “Sorry,” Sakura apologizes.

Hinata smiles and shakes her head. “Nothing to be sorry for. This is a difficult time. You’re allowed to space out or lose yourself every once in a while.”

Sakura’s eyes lose some of their dazed shine for a moment and she turns, quick as a whip, to face Hinata fully. “I can’t lose myself! I’m a kunoichi. If I space out, I’ll be vulnerable. I have to watch out for myself.”

“It’s a good thing I’m here to watch over you, too,” Hinata reminds her. “We’re in this together. We both lost a friend. I’m here for you and if you need some time to think I’ll make sure nothing hurts or bothers you.”

Sakura gives her a grateful look and they both head back out into their room. Hinata offers to clean up Sakura’s mess but Sakura refuses the offer on the grounds that she made the mess and therefore, she’s responsible for cleaning it up. Hinata doesn’t argue, just sits on the bed and watches quietly as Sakura gets to work. After she’s done, Hinata tells her to just lie down while she puts everything away. She pauses just before she closes the supply cupboard’s door.

Naruto’s dead. She’ll never go out for ramen with him anymore. She’ll never be able to joke around with him anymore.

And Sakura let him die.

Hinata knows, intellectually, that Naruto had begged and Sakura had been exhausted and she’d likely seen no other option. But in her heart she’s hurt. She’s hurt that Sakura didn’t try harder, didn’t try her hardest, didn’t drag Naruto back to the village, didn’t look for another option. It must have been hard. It must have been so hard for Sakura to sit there and watch her friend die. But it’s hard for Hinata too.

She sighs and shuts the door all the way.

“You think you’ll be able to sleep tonight?” Hinata asks after she’s washed her hands and gone back to their room. Sakura shrugs. “That’s okay,” Hinata reassures her. “Lights on?”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

“Of course.”

_#_

Sakura is surprisingly calm during Naruto’s funeral. She stands there, unmoving, unblinking, uncrying, until it’s her turn to go up. She’d requested to be able to say something. Her speech is short, consists of a few words that get out quietly, somehow, despite the burning urge to scream.

He was her best friend. She will love him until she can love no more.

The funeral is over quickly. Or maybe it isn’t, and Sakura’s so dazed she lets it go by in a blur. Either way, the next time she comes back to awareness, she’s walking home, holding Hinata’s hand. She takes a moment to savor the feeling of their fingers intertwined and then the realization that Naruto’s gone hits her. She’s never going to see him again, never going to hear him or feel him or know him or speak to him. And she made it happen. It’s too much to think about, so she doesn’t let herself think about it.

She does let Hinata lead her home slowly, and she talks about Naruto on the way. Hinata adds in her own tales and anecdotes about him. Sakura manages a smile toward the end of their walk. Maybe if she can think back to who Naruto used to be, she won’t have to think about where Naruto is now, what Naruto is now: a pair of legs in a coffin. Her smile dies out. Hinata squeezes her hand.

The night is shaping up to be a long one.

_#_

“You’re not mad at me, right?” Sakura asks. It’s been a month since Naruto died. Hinata stays silent. “Hinata?”

Hinata presses her lips together. “I don’t know what I’m feeling,” she replies truthfully.

“You can’t be mad at me,” Sakura says. “Everyone else—I can see it in them. They’re disappointed. They’re mad. I . . . I know it’s my fault he’s—”

Hinata interrupts her. “It’s not your fault. It was the fault of whoever got him with that last attack. And . . . I might be mad. I’m not sure. I loved him too, Sakura. He was my friend, too. He—” Hinata doesn’t know how to continue. She doesn’t like having to say this, doesn’t like having to confront her feeling out in the open. She _knows_ she shouldn’t be mad at Sakura. She knows Sakura had it worse, had to _watch_ him die. But Hinata wishes he was alive.

“I understand,” Sakura says, and rolls over on the bed. She tucks the blanket closer to her. “I really do. Good night.”

_#_

Sakura stares down at the little slip of paper in her hand. “Yamanaka . . . mental clinic? Hinata, I’m—”

“Don’t tell me you’re fine,” Hinata says, and it’s closer to a snap than Sakura thinks she realizes. Sakura wonders when Hinata started to be able to speak so confidently. She’s starting to find that she likes it, but that’s not really important right now. “You have nightmares. You space out for minutes at a time. You always—ask me—if I’m mad at you. You stare at your hands like you’re afraid they’re going to leap up and kill you and I know you _hate_ going to your hospital shifts in the morning. Being a medic was your pride and joy and now I see your shaking whenever you start to get ready for work. I’m—I’m worried.”

“I used to love being a medic. Not anymore. Whenever I see my hands now, I think—I stopped healing him,” Sakura says. Her words are sharp, jagged, and she sees Hinata takes a step back. “How can I enjoy going to work? How can I enjoy doing the one thing every day that I failed at when it was the most important? Am I always going to let my patients die if they beg me to stop? I can’t!”

Her voice turns shrill toward the end. She doesn’t want to yell at Hinata. She really doesn’t. But the stress keeps building up, higher and higher, so high that she thinks she’ll fall if she looks down. She’s just so tired. She’s tired of going past Naruto’s old house and expecting him to come out and say good morning to her. She’s tired of people looking at her like she’s a demon, like she killed him and he hadn’t asked to die. Like the Naruto they knew would never have wanted to die. Sakura’s beginning to think that even she didn’t know him as well as she thought she did.

“You can quit being a medic,” Hinata suggests.

“You know, I’ve thought about it. I want to. Gods know I want to. But what will Tsunade-shishou say? I don’t want her to be even more disappointed in me. I’ve got all this pressure on me and I can’t do it,” Sakura says, all in a rush. “I can’t keep going like this, expecting Naruto to always be there, taking shifts that I’m scared to take, h—healing people and all I can think when I’m there is why couldn’t I heal Naruto?”

Hinata blinks at her once, twice, and says, “Tsunade-san will understand. I guarantee it. She knows how hard it is for you, and she might be disappointed, but there’s just as good a chance that she won’t be. I really think you should go to the therapist, Sakura.”

Sakura eyes the little business card in defeat. It’s not like she’s going to get any better by herself. She nods at Hinata, calls the number, and sets up an appointment a week from now.

_#_

“How was it?” Hinata asks when Sakura gets home.

“It was . . . enlightening,” Sakura replies, slipping her shoes off and joining Hinata on the couch. “I’m thinking more seriously about quitting at the hospital. I’m—”

Hinata waits for her to go on, and only belatedly realizes that she isn’t going to. “You’re what?”

“Never mind,” Sakura says, shaking her head. “It’s kind of a big decision and I think I’m not really ready to tell you yet. Is—that’s okay, right?”

“Of course it’s okay,” Hinata says reassuringly. She notices that Sakura’s staring at her hands again. “I’m glad you’re thinking about quitting. Not—not that I want you to stop being a medic if you don’t want to—it just seemed like a healthier option than having to force yourself every day.”

Sakura smiles at her. Hinata tries not to feel guilty about partly blaming her for Naruto’s death. It’s . . . it’s not a constant blame, and neither is it an angry sort of blame, but whenever she thinks about Naruto she thinks about Sakura giving in. She thinks about Sakura and she thinks about Naruto begging to die and a tiny and yet somehow significant part of her mind says  _she could’ve done something else._ Hinata’s shaken out of her thoughts when Sakura gets up and her arm jostles Hinata’s shoulder.

“Sorry,” Sakura says.

“It’s okay. Going to make lunch?” Hinata asks.

Sakura pauses. “Actually, do you wanna—go out? We haven’t been in a while. I think I could use the distraction.”

Hinata could use the distraction too. Maybe sitting down and having a meal with Sakura—sitting down and being around people, which is never pleasant, but Hinata can bear it and smile—and talking and enjoying food she didn’t have to make herself will take her mind off her thoughts. “Where did you have in mind?”

“Yakiniku Q, probably,” Sakura says. “It’s been a while, and I used to—oh.”

 _Used to go there with Naruto_ is what Sakura probably hadn’t said.

“Are you sure you want to go there?” Hinata asks. “We can go someplace different if being there reminds you of him.”

Sakura takes a deep breath and appears to steel herself. “No. I’m sure. Yamanaka-san—Santa-san—said one way to cope is starting to go places I went with Naruto. He said if I continue to avoid them I might never be able to bring myself to go there again. Santa-san said I was cooping myself up and cutting off contact with everyone else because I didn’t want to be reminded of Naruto, and I . . . I realized that he’s right. I haven’t spoken to anyone but you for about a month.”

Hinata manages a smile. “I’m glad you went to see him. I’m proud of you, Sakura.”

Sakura huffs out a laugh. “Me too. Are you ready to go right now or do you need to get dressed in something else?”

Hinata looks herself over. “I’m presentable. You?”

Sakura nods. Together they head toward the door, stopping on the way to slip their shoes on. Hinata opens the door and head out, but when she turns back around to see why Sakura hasn’t followed her through it she finds Sakura standing there, the tips of her sandals just barely touching the threshold, standing there like she’s holding her breath.

“Sakura?”

Sakura stands there for a moment longer, taking slow, deep breaths in and out, and she finally looks into Hinata’s eyes. “I can do this, right?” she asks. Her voice is small. Hinata’s chest aches with the need to comfort her. “Tell me I can do this.”

“You can do it, Sakura,” Hinata says. “But if you really can’t, we can head back inside and I can cook something for us. I believe in you, though. Just take that one step out of the door and it’ll be easier and easier to take the next ones.”

Sakura’s hands are shaking. It’s slight but Hinata notices, and she’s about to call the whole thing off when Sakura says, “I can do this,” and steps out the door. She pauses after that, looks up at Hinata, and grins. Her hands are still wobbly, but she looks ecstatic. “I did it! First step to Yakiniku Q!”

Hinata smiles at her, but it’s really more of a grin, and holds out her hand. “Ready to go?”

“Ready to go.”

_#_

Hinata’s not sleeping. She’s staring at the ceiling and Sakura, in turn, is staring at her.

“What’s on your mind?” Sakura asks. She intertwines their fingers underneath the blanket and squeezes Hinata’s hand gently.

Hinata shakes her head. “It’s not something I should say.”

“You can tell me,” Sakura encourages. “I’ve trusted you with so much. It wouldn’t be fair for me to tell you you can’t say whatever’s on your mind.”

Hinata looks away from the ceiling and her eyes meet Sakura’s. They almost glow in the dark and an involuntary chill runs up her spine. “I really shouldn’t say this,” Hinata says. “It’s something that would make you mad at me. I shouldn’t have brought this up. I’m sorry.”

“Hold on. Hinata, I—I promise I won’t get mad, okay? I had to tell you I . . . let him die—and I know you weren’t mad at me. Please, trust me. You can open up. It’s okay,” Sakura says.

Hinata is silent for a minute and Sakura is a few seconds away from prodding at her again when she says, “That makes it even worse. I can’t stop thinking about how much better it would be if you hadn’t let Naruto die.” Hinata looks away from her. Shame is painted on every angle of her face. She whispers an apology to Sakura and her eyes eventually drift toward the ceiling again.

Sakura’s brain stops working for a few seconds until she registers the words. A sick, disgusted feeling washes up into her chest. It’s a mix of self-loathing and something she doesn’t know how to name. It might be betrayal. She doesn’t know and she doesn’t want to think about it. “Goodnight,” Sakura says. She releases Hinata’s hand and does her best to fall asleep, even if her best is really just rolling over and crying silently for half an hour before Hinata sits up and leaves the room. Sakura’s chest heaves and she lets herself cry loudly.

Hinata’s right—everything would have been better if she’d kept on trying. Hell, she could’ve stuck him in a storage scroll—but she just hadn’t been thinking. Santa-san says it’s okay that she hadn’t been thinking and even if she could have taken other actions the truth is she didn’t, and the first step she needs to take is accepting the decisions that she’d made. Every day it’s harder to accept that Naruto’s gone, but somehow, at the same, time it’s easier to adjust. Easier to remember that she can’t call Naruto on the phone any more. Easier to remember she’s not going to find him eating ramen at any given time. But the more she adjusts the more she hates herself for it. It’s been three months since Naruto died and Sakura can’t even get a proper grip on herself. She thinks she’d been chasing something close to okay for a little while—she’d been going out places with Hinata, had even started to spend a little time with her old friends—Ino, Shikamaru, Chōji, Shino. Right now she doesn’t think she’s chasing anything but a headache.

Sakura knows Hinata must also be trying to accept what Sakura did that day. She’s sure Hinata doesn’t want to keep blaming her for what she did. Sakura knows Hinata almost as well as she knows herself and she knows it must’ve taken a lot out of her to say what she did. That doesn’t make it any easier for her to deal with anything though.

Hinata returns a couple hours later and crawls under the blankets. There’s more space between them on the bed than Sakura remembers there ever having been. There’s a wall between them tonight and Sakura wishes she could both build it higher and tear it down piece by piece.

She doesn’t sleep that night.

_#_

Hinata goes out for a run the next morning. Being in the apartment is difficult. In the air hangs a tension so thick Hinata thinks it would stop a kunai dead in its tracks. She straps on a pair of practical sandals, jumps out the window just as the sun is coming up, and does twenty laps around the village. She doesn’t think. She just breathes, just feels the _slap-slap-slap_ of her sandals on the top of Konoha’s wall, hears the bustle of a village coming alive. Everyone who’s up—mostly civilians—sees her. She doesn’t care.

Eventually her mind catches up with her body and she takes a break to sit down and think. She doesn’t like poking the huge mess that she can loosely identify as her feelings about Naruto’s death, but she’ll have to if she wants to mend what happened between them yesterday. Her first thought is that she still loves Sakura no matter what. Of course she would—it feels wrong, somehow, to think otherwise.

“Hey! Who—oh. It’s you!” Hinata whips around to face whoever’s just talked and then mentally berates herself for not noticing Kiba’s presence. He and Akamaru are still a good distance away, but he’s always had quite the set of lungs. “Whatcha doing up here!? Oh, geez, don’t tell me you’ve been crying again.” Hinata gives him a helpless look and his facial expression changes from slightly annoyed to moderately concerned.  “Hey . . . are you okay?” he asks when he’s near enough to not have to shout.

“I had a fight with Sakura,” Hinata says, shrugging. She wants to tell him more but she’s afraid anything else would be a violation of her privacy. Akamaru sniffs at her hands and she scratches his ear absently.

“If it’s about—about Naruto,” Kiba says, “you know you can talk to me any time though, right? You haven’t been out as much since he died.” Kiba’s always been too perceptive, too sharp, too knowing. Sometimes Hinata resents it. Right now she loves him for it because all she’s wanted all morning is to be able to talk to someone who isn’t Sakura.

“I just can’t believe he’s really gone.” Hinata wraps her arms around her knees. “I know it happened. I know he’s dead and he’s not coming back. But living the reality of it is harder than I ever thought it would be. I thought Naruto would be around . . . forever. And knowing he’s gone and it’s at least a little bit Sakura’s fault is—is horrible. I don’t want to blame her but I do because I keep thinking what if Naruto was here? What if we could talk like we used to?”

Kiba sucks in a breath through his teeth and crouches down next to her. He puts a hand on her shoulder and Hinata automatically leans into his touch. “I’m sorry, Hinata,” he says, and it’s so sincere and genuine that Hinata feels herself tearing up. She wipes at her eyes a few times but otherwise makes no move to try to stop herself from crying. “That must feel horrible.” He doesn’t say any more and Hinata doesn’t ask him to. They sit there in silence until another patrol-tokujō comes by and takes Kiba along with her. Hinata figures this is as good a time as any to head home.

Sakura’s waiting in the living room for her.

“Hinata,” she starts, but Hinata cuts her off.

“I’m sorry,” she says, before Sakura can get a word in edgewise. “I know I shouldn’t have said that to you—”

“No—no. Listen, Hinata. I thought about it a lot and I’m not happy but I realized you’re allowed to wish I’d not killed him. I keep forgetting this isn’t about me, this is about him. Not me. I know you said that because he was your best friend too and you wish he was still alive,” Sakura says, and Hinata blinks.

“Yes,” she agrees. “He was . . . he meant so much to me. I’m still sorry for what I said. I want you to know that I love you though, no matter how I feel about Naruto’s death.” Hinata pours as much love and affection into her words as she can. “I’m trying the best I can to sort through my feelings. It’s hard to and I keep circling back to _what if_? I know I shouldn’t, but—it’s so hard not to.”

Sakura bites her lip and her hands twitch. “Maybe you should come see a therapist too. Santa-san has been really helpful for me. Maybe . . . I think someone could help you too. I’m not the only one who was shaken up by his death.”

It’s a good idea and Hinata has no arguments against it, so she promises Sakura she’ll go to the clinic in person tomorrow and set herself up with an appointment.

_#_

Sakura joins Hinata during her morning runs after a month of waking up at dawn to an open window and a cool breeze. It’s the most fun she’s had in a while and she enjoys it without reservation—or she tries to. It’s easy to clear her head while she’s running though. It’s her legs moving up and down in sync with Hinata’s and there is nothing to think about except the up-down motion of her body. Eventually they stray from their usual path and end up veering off into the forest. Turns out hopping from branch to branch with no particular goal in mind is much more fun than having to do it for missions.

Since Hinata’s appointments at the Yamanaka building are usually early in the morning, Sakura and Hinata finish their runs and Hinata goes straight to the clinic and Sakura goes home to take a shower and head right back to bed. Her life is busier now, too—Santa-san had said she’s been isolating herself and now that Sakura has these runs, she realizes how true it’d been. She quits her job at the hospital, explaining to Tsunade-shishou that the hospital holds nothing but stress for her now, and stays at home for a few days, minus the runs, and when Hinata’s out with Kiba or Shino, or sometimes both, it’s so easy to fall back into a bad mindset.

She’s about to consider downing a bottle or two of cheap alcohol and damning the consequences when she remembers Santa-san had told her not to do things she thought would numb the pain. He’d said that was how most addictions started, and as much as the prospect of getting drunk appeals to her she doesn’t want an addiction. Sakura puts the bottle away with some regret and stands up.

She guesses she should start reaching out to her friends again. For real this time, not just a passing greeting and a meal at some restaurant or the other.

She can start with Ino, who’s been allegedly pestering Santa-san about seeing her at the clinic. It’s been far too long since she talked to her other best friend and Sakura’s looking forward to catching up. Maybe she can start a new chapter of her life. Maybe Hinata can live it right along with her and they can work through their problems and life will be okay someday in the very far future. At least—that’s what she hopes. Sakura straps her favorite pair of sandals to her feet and starts on the familiar path to the Yamanaka compound.

_#_

It’s gradual. They drift together gradually. Some nights they can’t sleep and that’s okay—they just catch up the next day. They talk to each other and now instead of just coping and shutting things away, just existing in spite of grief, they’re existing with it. Existing as their own people, existing as the accumulation of all their memories, good and bad, and the grief—the grief is just a part of them that dwindles, slowly, over time.

It’s been seven months. Hinata glances over at Sakura, who’s sleeping peacefully on the bed next to her, and smiles. She wouldn’t give this up for the world.

_#_

“Hey. Hey, Sakura.”

“Mmngh?” Someone shakes her shoulder. It’s Hinata. Who else would it be? “What do you want?” Sakura asks tiredly. Her eyes are puffy. She’d been crying again today at Naruto’s grave, and she knows she’s allowed to be sad on the anniversary of his death, but she hadn’t let herself cry until the very end when the sun had started to dip down toward the horizon, and when she’d cried she’d wrung herself dry. She feels empty now.

“Let’s go somewhere. I don’t want to be here tonight,” Hinata whispers. Sakura forces herself up into a sitting position. The window’s cracked open and Hinata’s perched on the edge of her bed. She’s beautiful. Her hair is messy and her cheeks are flushed, like she’s been running again, and Sakura nods before she knows she’s done it. “Great,” Hinata says, and helps Sakura pull herself out of bed. “Let’s go.”

Sakura manages a weak smile and follows Hinata out the window. She feels something in her coming alive as the night, too, comes alive. They run, just the two of them, two bright souls in a sleeping village, past Konoha’s walls and into the forest, and Sakura finds it in herself to whoop as they fling themselves from branch to branch. They play a game of cat and mouse in the forest and half the time Sakura’s not sure if she’s supposed to be running from Hinata or chasing after her. It’s exhilarating. It’s fun. She doesn’t think too much about him.

They eventually circle back to their house and collapse onto the roof, breathing heavily, legs weak from exhaustion and cheeks flushed from exhilaration. Hinata grabs Sakura’s hand and gestures toward the night sky. “Look,” Hinata says, tracing the stars with her free arm. “They’re bright tonight. I’ve . . . I’ve always liked the winter constellations.”

“I think I like the ones that come out during the summer better,” Sakura murmurs. She’s tired. They’ll doubtless go to bed soon, but but right now Sakura’s happy to let the cold nip at her nose and cheeks. Naruto’s gone and the pain is still there but it feels like a bruise now, a bruise compared to the gaping hole in her chest it’d once been. It isn’t dripping with blood and grief and anger anymore. With sorrow-regret-pain. It’s there—enough for Sakura to cry if she thinks about it for too long and too hard, but it’s hardly the looming behemoth it’d been just eight months ago.

“Me too,” Hinata agrees.

Naruto died during the cold season, a summer star who’d flickered out when winter had come knocking on his doorstep. The night sky is bright with winking pinpricks of light. She wonders if Naruto’s up there watching her right now, reunited with his parents. She wonders if Naruto’s happier over there, if what he’d found up there in the sky had been what he was looking for.

She hopes so.

Sakura closes her eyes and thinks of summer stars.


End file.
